Man, I miss Foster.

Fascinating. The growth from black hole to supermassive must occur relatively early in the life of a galaxy. How else would a black hole have such a large supply of binary star systems to cannibalize?

Really well said. And, as was said above, the whole "voice of a generation" business should be blamed on marketing's failure to drive the joke home, that these women are not in fact the voice of their generation. Or something. Whatever....

Can't wait for BP to try its hand at asteroid spills!

ETA: Point taken. Although, I don't understand why you believe that supermassive black holes would prefer to eat binary stars, rather than singular ones, especially when singular stars are more abundant and would better account for a black holes exponential increase in mass. My understanding of the article is that, we…

Gorgeous.

Point taken.

For...anything?

My guess is that they serve as foot rests, either by design or in practice. That's how I'd take advantage of them, anyway — and you can see that they're all scuffed up that way too.

If you squint, it looks like a mini Saab J35 Draken, in drone form.

"Ahead?" "Behind?" Clearly we're stuck thinking linearly, when they are both ahead and behind.

How can we ever see eye to eye with a nation whose chairs look like that? Oh — they have height adjustment AND lumbar support? There's hope for us yet.

If we are using the same encryption protocol for drone maintenance logs as we are for various, sensitive on-board computer suites, then we have a more systemic security problem than a cryptic, downed drone with a leaky gasket.

Nothing would get me through security faster than the sight of, or mere threat of seeing, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff in the buff.

This is what happens when you fail these tests — you end up working in the state exam writing department. It's a vicious cycle, and I've you've ever gotten into a washer with a pineapple, you know how painful that can be! Amirite? Hit those books, kids.

Bēkon o kuso.

I can't believe it took us over 100 years to develop a $50 nail clipper!

Ditto. Cronenberg should have been on yesterday's "science-fiction-and-fantasy-creators-who-became-their-own-genres" list. [io9.com]

Un-film: French deconstructionist cinema.

It starts with asteroids. And ends with strip mining extrasolar planets and pissed navi.